Al Franken hammers Facebook lawyer at hearing over Russian ads

Senator clashes with Colin Stretch over how tech giants apparently missed posts coming from Russia: ‘How could you not connect the dots?’

A top executive at Facebook struggled to answer on Tuesday as an angry and incredulous Al Franken, a Democratic senator, demanded why the social network accepted political advertisements paid for in Russian roubles during the presidential election.

Colin Stretch, vice-president and general counsel at Facebook, admitted that the internet company could have done better in tracing the source of its ad funding during testimony to a Senate judiciary subcommittee. It is the first of three congressional hearings focusing on how three tech giants – Facebook, Google and Twitter – were exploited by Russia to sway voters.